Consumers Will Pay the Price for Modified Food

Dr. E. Ann Clark is a Professor at the University of Guelph. Recently, I attended a presentation in Guelph by Professor Conrad Brunk, Dean of Humanities - Conrad Grebel College, on Genetically Modified Organisms.

During this presentation Professor Ann Clark was introduced but did not speak. Everyone seemed to know who she was except for me. I did a computer search when I got home and found a speech that she had presented at the University of Manitoba on Genetically Modified Organisms.

In her speech, Professor Clark addressed an important issue. "Who is going to pay the price for our experimentation with Genetically Modified Organisms? Far from keeping food cheap, GM technology shows every likelihood of raising the price of food as well as contaminating it," says Dr. Clark.

I came to the conclusion that this topic was something that more people should be aware of so I contacted Professor Clark. I asked if she would be available to speak in Cambridge, if we could get her an audience. She has suggested that she has a busy schedule but could possibly arrange something for later in the year. If anyone would like to hear Professor Clarke speak, please call me [...] and I will make arrangements, if the numbers warrant.

To quote Dr. Clark, "In a nutshell, GM technology has been commercialized prematurely, with a very incomplete understanding of the genetic and physiological underpinnings of the technology, and without due regard for the clear potential for externalized costs."

The industry will try to tell you that this new technology is nothing different from what has gone on for generations but this is not true. Selective breeding for traits is profoundly different from taking DNA from one species and blasting it into another with a gun. The technique may be revolutionary but it is profoundly crude. As someone said "It is like stealing a book from one library and blasting it through the window of another library and then claiming the new library as your property." Who cares if some of the pages are torn, and rearranged, in other books during the process?

The hope is that some DNA will be blasted into the other DNA spirals and link. This then may create "beneficial" traits in the new host. What is not known is what happens within the modified organism.

Scientists have always known that genes serve more than one purpose as they are linked and cross linked in endless ways. They have called this phenomenon Pleiotropy. The unexpected repercussions that can come from this DNA manipulation may take a long time to identify. It will take generations to identify just a fraction of repercussions. One such unhappy result is that sometimes plants which could not cross pollinate closely related crops can now do so. This may cause super weeds that will need stronger herbicides to kill them, thereby eliminating any original benefit. (This will be a direct benefit to the herbicide producer, of course.)

The assumption that a transformed crop is exactly the sum of the original crop and the introduced gene is not acceptable. The industry likes to argue that the new product is substantially equivalent to the old product. Under the microscope the Chimpanzee is substantially equivalent to human except that we have vocal cords (which we should be using).

The new identified traits of modified products appear to be advantageous if you listen to the Corporate press releases. This is because they never, ever, factor in the externalities. These costs always come later and are borne involuntarily by the public. Seldom does the provider of the technology pay.

An extreme example of this is the Walkerton water contamination. This problem could be said to be an externalized cost of farming.

We all know the costs of farming. There are land costs, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and hired help to pay. Now we see what the externalities can be. The cost comes about because farmers are forced to raise more and more cattle on less and less land just to stay marginally competitive and profitable.

A recent example of unplanned externalized costs came about by the introduction of StarLink corn,a GMO hybrid. This corn was identified as having the potential for allergenicity in humans and was only allowed to be grown as animal feed. The product ended up in hundreds of food products, however, because it was virtually impossible to control the distribution and marketing once it was grown, and in the market place.

Imagine the bureaucracy necessary to track the stuff. A paper trail for each field, inspectors to do audits of farms and processors, separate grain elevators, genetic testing of every load of produce, special cleaning of handling and transportation equipment, tracking rejected produce to ensure that it does not end up in the human food chain. Governments could be obliged to take on this task which will be paid for by the taxpayer.

The taxpayer will always be called on to pay unless strict liability provisions are implemented.

Have a nice day.